let them come home

Everyone at the clinic liked Marcus’s piercings. There was a nurse who worked there – Raye, the one who had put on the gas mask the first day Marcus showed up – who gave Marcus a smile and a thumbs up when he saw them. The patients in the waiting room seemed to like them, too; Marcus recognized them all, and he supposed they were starting to recognize him, too. Even Celeste cracked a smile as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nice,” she said. “You don’t look nearly so much like—”

“Celeste,” Lars sighed as they rolled their eyes.

She rolled hers right back. “Well. You don’t. It’s a good look.”

Jake just grinned.

Marcus followed Lars and Jake into the back of the clinic, rolling his shoulders and ignoring the phantom ache in his right arm. At this point he had tackled the storage room and the three patient rooms, as well as a different storage closet that he figured was probably left over from when this building had just been an office space. It held reams of copy paper, office supplies, holiday decorations, expired snacks, and piles of other junk that Marcus had combed through and organized until it looked as good as the rest of the clinic. The only room left to get through was Lars’s office. He figured it might take some convincing to let him organize that space. He wondered if he could simply lock them out until he was finished. They probably had other shit to do, anyway.

He glanced and Jake, wondering whose side he would take. He had to catch his breath. Jake was staring at him, looking better than he had since…

Since. He still had the slightest limp if someone was paying attention – and Marcus was always paying attention – but the bruises had faded. The brace was still on his forearm, but there was no other sign of the torture he’d survived for so long.

Except for when he smiled. His front tooth was still chipped, and probably would be forever. Marcus almost didn’t want to know what the men had done to him that had caused that. Maybe he would ask, one day. Or maybe Jake would tell him, when he was ready.

Jake took his metal hand. It ended the buzzing pain he hadn’t even realized had been gathering at the corners of his awareness. Jake squeezed; Marcus would have felt that, even before Todd adjusted the settings. But then Jake stroked his thumb back and forth against the back of Marcus’s hand, settling a brief wave of tingles. That, Marcus wouldn’t have felt until now. He – gently, carefully – squeezed back.

Marcus kissed his temple, and Jake melted against his side.

Lars dropped their keys on their desk with a sigh. Marcus eyed the piles of paper littering their desk, the floor, the shelves around them. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight from side to side.

“If you both are up to it,” Lars mumbled, “I didn’t have time to restock rooms when I left last night. Would you be willing to do that?”

Marcus glanced up. “Stock… rooms?” The piles of papers and boxes of syringes were so tantalizing. He already knew where he would start: there was a big pile of paper near the door with a sheet on top with giant letters scrawled across that said TO SHRED. It would be so easy. He would take those to the shredder, feed the papers through, then take the bags of paper bits out to the trash to make room in here for—

“Yeah, do you mind?” Lars said. “We’re out of almost everything. I think we’re entirely out of 21 gauges in the room closest to the waiting r—”

“Room one, yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I can…” He glanced around at the papers again. “If that’s… what you need…”

“What I need is about ten million credits a year, a full-time staff, and for every person who works at AMTEC to suck-start a shotgun, preferably on national fucking news,” Lars snapped. Marcus’s eyes flicked to theirs as he froze.

Jake drew in a deep breath. “Lars,” he said gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” they griped. “Just… I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just been a shitty week. Will you please just—”

“On it, yeah,” Marcus said, turning to go. A flush prickled across his cheeks and neck. He felt it again, that horrible urge: shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. And another urge: to flinch away from a raised hand, a baton, a whip.

Yes, sir.

Even though he knew Lars would never do that, never want that from him. Lars was the farthest person from an AMTEC officer Marcus had ever met.

Lars was exactly the type of person Marcus would have been sent to kill a few months ago. Quickly, quietly, so there would be no news footage. The news would spin a story from the aftermath anyway, like they were paid to. He’d seen it so many times.

Terrorists… Drug smuggling… Heroic AMTEC raid… No civilian casualties… Increasing AMTEC budget once again…

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the thought.

How many of the people I’ve killed were like Lars? Like Celeste and Todd?

Like Jake?

Jake squeezed his hand once more, startling him out of his reverie. “They’re just having a bad day,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

Marcus pressed an absent-minded kiss to Jake’s cheek. “I know,” he said. “I know that.” He headed into a room. “I’ll start on this one, you start on the next?”

Jake held onto his hand and pulled him up short. “Sure,” he said, giving Marcus one last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

Marcus blew out a slow breath as he trudged to the first cabinet and opened it. Things inside weren’t as bad as Lars made them out to be; they still had enough linens to get through four patients, and enough syringes to probably get through the entire evening. But Lars liked things a certain way. Marcus supposed he could understand that. He opened the next cabinet. There was no extra butcher paper for the exam table. That, he conceded, was a more immediate problem.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His head turned toward the paper-over window before he even realized what he was listening for.

Then the noise happened again: footsteps. Outside. Near the back of the building, where no patients had any reason to be.

He stepped out of the clinic room, flexing his metal hand. “Jake,” he said flatly from the hallway. “Get everyone into the back. Now.”

He didn’t turn to see if he would be obeyed. He knew he would be. He’d trained Jake too well for any other outcome.

He stalked down the hallway and through the lobby. Celeste glanced up at him and fell silent at the look on his face.

“Get everyone in the back now,” he said.

She wordlessly rose. The two patients in the waiting room didn’t move. Marcus ignored them. Everyone had their orders. Now he had his role. He pushed the doors open and snuck soundlessly out into the evening.

He’d heard the footsteps on the north side of the building, so that’s where he headed. If they were circling the building, or if there was more than one, well—

He told Jake to keep the others safe in the back. Marcus just had to make sure no one got that far. Not when Jake was still hurt. Not when he was still—

I never wanted him to have to fight again.

He crushed that thought. At the moment, it was irrelevant.

Overgrown bushes lined the northeast corner of the building, and so he immediately ducked into them. He shuddered as the branches trailed along his metal arm, sparking bizarre sensations.

He felt naked without his gun, or at least his knife. But he’d killed with his bare hands before.

A few yards away, gravel crunched under someone’s shoe – and it was definitely a shoe. Not a tac boot.

That was something, at least.

A metallic rattling sound.

A curse.

Marcus registered all these sounds, doing his best to pinpoint the assailant in space before he struck. He hoped there was only one.

If there wasn’t, at least he had warned the others.

He launched himself out of the bushes and closed the distance to the assailant in two quick strides. The man – maybe about Lars’s age – cried out as Marcus tackled him to the ground. The spray paint can flew from his hands as Marcus twisted both arms behind him.

“Agh! Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know anyone was—” He cut himself off with a gasp as Marcus’s metal hand compressed his wrist.

A storm raged in Marcus’s head. Habit – more than habit, it was training, repetition, instinct – battered at him, bent his body toward a specific shape. Gun, if no gun then knife, if no knife then strike the face and neck. Execute and move. Execute and move. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to kill this man. He couldn’t remember who sent him outside. Had he done that on his own? He wasn’t allowed to self-deploy, not unless that was specifically stated in the mission objectives. Had someone ordered this man’s death? Had someone ordered him to kill any hostiles he came across?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

He needed clarification. Unauthorized executions by Levs were punishable by consignment. He had to seek further orders.

Back inside it was, then.

Marcus wordlessly wrestled the man to his feet. The man was pleading, sobbing, but Marcus didn’t hear it. He had learned not to hear it, when people begged for mercy – not that people often lived long enough to beg, with him. He was so, so good at this. He grabbed the man’s wrists in metal hand and seized the collar of his shirt in his other, shoving him toward the clinic entrance. He figured it didn’t much matter if the man saw the inside of the clinic. Once Marcus got clearance to dispatch him, he’d do it, quickly. Maybe he would be given his gun back. He wasn’t sure where it was. He’d be whipped for that. He might get worse than a whipping.

He released the man’s collar only for long enough to yank open the door and shove him ahead of him. He could feel the man’s wrists bruising under his grip. Cuffs would have been easier, but he didn’t seem to have those, either. He had fucked up with his equipment, and badly. Why the fuck didn’t I pack for this mission properly? His mind flitted to Jake. But no, he would have checked everything to make sure his trainee didn’t fuck them over this badly. This was his fault, whatever had happened.

Whatever had happened, he was going to be punished for it. He was going to be beaten. Depending on who the XO for this mission was, he might just find himself bent over a table for it. But if he hid – if he avoided the consequences – it would be so much worse. And if he just killed this man and hid the evidence of his failure… He shuddered to even imagine. The sooner he handled this absolutely massive fuckup and dealt with the consequences, the sooner he could—

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen after that. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. He shoved the man forward anyway, approached the door leading into the back of the clinic the base, and knocked. The door was locked. He knew he should wait.

“M-Marcus?” came the shaking voice from behind the door.

He… knew he shouldn’t answer to that name, that he should answer to Levy Unit C9I4M3, but that was the name that had been used. “Yes,” he croaked. “I have the assailant. Permission to execute.”

The door swung open, and Marcus stared into Jake’s eyes. He blinked.

Lars stood right behind Jake. Marcus shook himself. That’s who he reported to. He’d forgotten for a moment. He lifted his head and cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I need clarification on my orders.”

“Stop,” Lars breathed. “Marcus… Who the fuck is this?”

The man started blubbering. “M-my name is Tobias, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me, I didn’t know what this place was, I was just… I didn’t realize it was… oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was AMTEC, I didn’t know, I swear to g—”

“We’re not AMTEC,” Lars said, pushing past Jake. “Marcus, let him go—”

The man squirmed in Marcus’s grasp. Marcus’s brows pulled together. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d never – ever – been told to release a captive before. AMTEC’s prisoners got put down, or put in a hole. That’s how it worked.

Perhaps he’d misheard.

He shoved the man to his knees. His arms were pulled back in Marcus’s grip, and he cried out, rocking forward to relieve the pressure.

“Sir,” Marcus said. “I… I apologize for my sloppiness, in letting him get so close. But I… n-need clarification.” They were going to think he was stupid. And stupid Levs got consigned. But if he didn’t ask, they weren’t going to tell him, and releasing a prisoner into the base seemed like a profoundly stupid idea, even if it had been ordered by a superior officer. “Do I… have permission to execute—”

“Marcus,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, you need to look around, okay? We’re not in AMTEC anymore. You don’t have to—”

Rage surged through Marcus. Jake was going to get them both killed. He twisted the man’s wrists up, forcing him to bend further forward. He sobbed into the floor.

Lars lunged forward, hand raised toward the man. “Marcus!” they snapped, sounding to all the world like someone correcting a disobedient dog. “Marcus, enough.”

Marcus let the man go. Shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. Lars yanked their hand back like they’d been scalded. Jake just looked at Marcus with an unreadable expression.

No. Not unreadable. It was pity, written across his features clear as day.

“Fuck,” Marcus breathed. He took a halting step back. There was no one else in the hallway; the clinic doors were all closed, and he suspected all the patients and nurses had barricaded themselves inside. That’s where he was: the HRT clinic. He was at the clinic. Not the base.

The man sobbing at his feet wasn’t AMTEC. He didn’t look like a patient, either; his clothes looked dirty, but they were well-fitting and expensive looking. Marcus watched as Lars knelt down and grasped his shoulders, helping him sit up. There were dark bruises on his wrists where Marcus had held him.

The horror didn’t quite land, though. Not until his eyes returned to Jake’s, and he saw tears there.

Heat flooded his throat.

“Marcus,” Jake said softly.

Marcus didn’t wait for whatever Jake had been about to say. He turned and ran.

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Lars drove Jake and Marcus to Todd’s place the next day. Marcus would have preferred to come by himself – he didn’t want Jake knowing that the prosthetic he’d been given so he could save him was anything less than perfect – but it would have been worse to leave Jake alone and unprotected. Lars had half-suggested they all take the bus, but there was almost a mile walk from Lars’s house to the bus stop, and then another almost-mile walk from the bus to Todd’s house. There was the issue of the bus itself as well, the idea of which had Marcus’s skin crawling.

“It’s a metal tube filled with people, any of who could have a weapon, or a camera. Fuck no. Absolutely not.”

Lars had rolled their eyes. “Throw in a complaint about drugs, and you sound like my mother.”

“I don’t give a fuck about drugs,” Marcus had said. “I give a fuck about AMTEC.”

Lars stayed after they dropped Marcus and Jake off. It wasn’t like Todd was going to be able to drive them back. The only vehicle he owned was a bicycle, which he rode whether it was snowing, raining, or ninety fucking degrees outside, apparently.

Todd greeted them at the door and led them through the nightmarishly cluttered house once more. Marcus kept his eyes on the floor in front of him so that he wouldn’t feel the stacks of records, books, and other shit pressing down on him. Jake looked around in fascination. His hand found Marcus’s and squeezed.

When they reached the door to the garage, Todd turned and glanced at Jake and Lars. “Maybe… I could do this one on one?” he said, his voice in that same low, even tone that Marcus had found so unnerving when they first met. “The garage isn’t sterile, but… I like to keep it as close as I can. You know. Surgery and stuff.”

“’Course,” Lars said easily. “Can I get Jake a drink from the kitchen?”

“You know where everything is,” Todd said, and led Marcus into the garage. The sudden shock of cleanliness and order was like a gulp of cold water on a fevered throat.

Todd guided Marcus to a chair in the corner of the garage – more an exam chair than anything else. Marcus’s eyes stayed fixed on the surgery table in the center of the room. He wet his lips as he stared at it. He could remember lying down on it, staring at the ceiling, hearing his arm cut away and feeling the pressure of the new one screwed into his skeleton. He remembered how the world faded, when he couldn’t bear any more. He remembered how he cried out for Jake when it did.

His throat tightened. Todd pulled up a rolling stool in front of him, his eyes roaming over the metal arm as if checking his work.

“How’s the arm working out for you, Marcus?” he said.

“Good,” Marcus answered quickly. “It’s… it’s good.” He swallowed. “A little, um, too good. That’s why I’m here, I guess.”

Todd’s brow furrowed. He turned that unblinking gaze on Marcus’s face. “Too good?”

“Yeah.” Marcus flexed his metal fingers into a fist. “It’s… it’s too powerful. I’m worried I’ll…” A shiver rolled over his shoulders, a manifestation of the fear he hadn’t even allowed himself to speak into existence until now. “I’m worried I’ll… hurt him, Todd. I’m worried I’ll break him.”

Todd reached out and took Marcus’s metal wrist in his hand. Marcus didn’t flinch away; the touch didn’t disgust him. It didn’t quite feel like Todd was touching him, after all. Todd extended the arm out, rotated it, inspected each joint in the metal and carbon fiber. He lifted Marcus’s short sleeve and peered at the seam between the arm and Marcus’s body. He ran a fingertip along the scar. That, Marcus felt. He leaned away.

Todd chewed his lip. “Well… I can go into the control panel, decrease the torque. I don’t want to decrease too much, because then the forces can get uneven across the piece and things can break. But a little bit I can do. Maybe—”

“How much?” Marcus said. “Todd… I can go through metal with this thing. I can… I shattered a stainless steel cell door lock. The cuffs they use for Le—” He cut himself off with a choke. “I broke a pair of stainless steel cuffs like it was nothing. It was like snapping my fingers. I didn’t even feel it.” He leaned forward, eyes fixed on Todd’s. “And I… I can’t… do that to him. Okay? With this arm, I don’t think there’s a thing in this room I couldn’t shred like tissue paper. And I can’t hurt him.”

Slowly, Todd nodded. “I get you, man. I think I calibrated the torque too high. Let me access the control panel and I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

Marcus nodded, weak with relief. Todd retrieved a screwdriver with an odd shape at the end and pressed it to Marcus’s shoulder, just below where the metal met flesh. He removed four screws and pried up a small panel, revealing a mess of wires beneath.

“Hm,” Todd murmured to himself. “Hm. Yup, I can add a dampener to the signal as well, I think. That would be… Yeah, I can do that.”

Marcus stared down at his metal hand. “And… if you can’t do it, that’s okay, but… could you… make me feel more? With the arm?”

Todd stopped what he was doing and stared at Marcus. Their proximity was making Marcus nervous.

He could put the screwdriver to my throat. It’s dull, but it could do some damage if he was motivated. And there are a dozen tools in here that could—

He clamped down on that thought. He was so fucking tired of thinking that way.

Todd finally opened his mouth. “I can turn up the afferent signal so that you receive more touch data for your brain to process, but… you’ll also get more… noise.”

Marcus swallowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll have more… pain. Your brain will process the random signals the arm throws your way, and four times out of every five, it’ll process that random signal as pain.”

“But… I’ll be able to feel when Jake… touches me.” Marcus drew his fingertips along his metal palm. He felt nothing. Nothing but cold metal. He might as well have been touching a gun in his hand.

Todd was looking at him, but Marcus couldn’t meet his gaze. After a long moment, Todd said, “yeah. You’ll be able to feel more. You’ll just also hurt a lot more. All the time.”

Marcus nodded once. “Sounds good.”

Todd hesitated. Then, he went to his tool bench, picked up a few things, and got to work.

He turned down the torque first. Marcus didn’t know how he knew, he could just… tell that the arm couldn’t do as much as it could a few minutes before. It felt… heavier, almost. A little sluggish.

That was good. He wanted it like that.

He felt it immediately when Todd started messing with the sensitivity. He felt the tickle in his brain as his awareness of the arm increased second by second. It felt… good, almost. Like feeling coming back into a limb after hours of numbness.

He trailed his fingertips over his hand. Still nothing.

Todd messed with the settings some more. “That okay?” he said.

“No,” Marcus said. “More.”

Todd nodded and kept poking around in Marcus’s hardware.

Marcus glanced around the room, admiring the tidiness, the cleanliness, the way every single tool seemed to have its place. The place looked like it had been spit shined. And then there was Todd, with his long, salt-and-pepper hair, his oversized t-shirt, and his demeanor. He was as strange as any person Marcus had met in the past two months. Anyone would look at Todd and know that he was…

Well. They’d look at him and know that he was not like Marcus at all.

“Hey, Todd,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice sounding casual.

“Yeah.” More tingling, more twinging.

“Do I… look AMTEC to you?”

Todd nodded. “Oh, yeah. No offence.”

Marcus’s jaw locked. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

Todd shrugged. “I mean… are you just saying that, or are you actually seeking advice?”

Marcus blinked. He’d been seeking advice; why else would he have said it? “I want to know. I know the haircut, but I can’t exactly do anything about it right now. I’m growing it out as fast as humanly… fucking possible.”

Todd chuckled brightly. “Oh, no, the haircut isn’t that bad, honestly. It’s pretty cool. A little punk. I know three lesbians with the exact same cut. Not that you’re—” He shook his head. “But you’re… well. From my perspective? Most of the people I know have tattoos or piercings.” He tilted his head at Marcus. “But not you. Not a single one. Maybe you just don’t like them, but… I don’t know. The only institution that requires absolutely no tattoos or piercings is AMTEC. Even Lars’s job lets them have them, you know?”

Marcus’s eyes widened. He’d noticed Lars’s tattoos before – he’d been trained to memorize people’s unique markings, and that habit wasn’t gone, not after just two months – but as he ran through all the people he’d seen since he escaped, he couldn’t think of a single one who didn’t have at least one of these three things: a tattoo, a piercing, or hair that was out of regs.

Lars had tattoos up and down both arms and on their neck, piercings in both ears and their nose, and their hair was out of regs. Celeste had multiple piercings in both ears, and she never wore her hair back. Todd had long hair and a stud in his nose. And those were just the people Marcus knew. It really was everyone Marcus could remember seeing.

He’d never really wanted a tattoo or piercing. What would be the point? His body was AMTEC property, and damaging it would be punished as severely as firebombing one of their buildings would have been.

Now, though?

He didn’t feel like his body was his. Not yet. He wasn’t sure if he ever would. But he just wanted to feel like it wasn’t theirs.

He hissed out a breath as Todd prodded another component in the control panel. His awareness of his arm shot up – and the arm began to ache. He ran his fingers over his hand. He felt it.

“Todd,” he whispered. “Maybe a touch less?”

The buzzing tingle-pain in his arm decreased a few notches. He could still feel the touch. “Perfect.”

Todd replaced the panel and began to twist the screws back into place. Marcus glanced around the room once more. “Um, Todd?” he said hesitantly. “While I’m here… could I get a piercing?”

He felt instantly foolish. His cheeks flushed. He regretted the question and wished he could take it back.

Instead of laughing, though, Todd said, “of course, man. Once I’m done with this, I’ll show you what I have.”

Marcus’s arm prickled uncomfortably as Todd finished replacing the panel. Todd strode over to a set of drawers and pulled the top one out. Marcus rose to join him. To his surprise, he felt a little woozy.

Is it the work on the arm? Or the thought of getting a piercing?

Either option was embarrassing. He’d been shot before, and had stayed awake through getting his arm cut off.

Once he reached the drawer, though, he forgot how he was feeling. It was filled with row after row of glittering jewelry.

Holy shit, he mouthed.

“What do you think you’d like?” Todd said.

Marcus had absolutely no idea. Most of the pieces looked like studs; he thought that would be best. The idea of having something dangling off himself made him shudder. And maybe not a jewel. Maybe… something the color of metal. His eyes moved over the rows until he found jewelry that looked like gold, pinkish gold, and silver.

And a colder, darker metal. The color of gunmetal.

“That,” he said, pointing. “I think I’d like that.”

If an AMTEC officer ever looked at him again, he wanted them to see the color of their weapons looking back at them from the holes in his face.

“You got it, man,” Todd said. “Where do you want it?”

Marcus swallowed. He wanted them everywhere. “Um… how many can I do today?”

Todd snorted. “I think earlobes are a good place to start. And… we can also do a nostril, if you want. But we’ll start with earlobes. Let me wipe down my equipment and set up, and I can get this all done in a few minutes.”

Marcus watched in fascination as the laid-back Todd prepared everything with borderline military precision. He put on gloves and wiped down the table in the center of the room. Then, he laid out a small table with the jewelry and a few needles. Once that was done, he had Marcus lay down on the table. Marcus shivered as he stared up at the ceiling. His arm tingled and ached. His ran his fingertips across his metal forearm and marveled and how he could feel it.

“If you want me to stop, just tell me,” Todd said. “Even if I’ve just done one. No hard feelings, man.

Marcus nodded. He knew he wouldn’t want to stop.

Todd sanitized Marcus’s left earlobe first. He picked up the needle. “Do you want me to count down, or do it?” he said.

“Just do—”

The needle punched through. Marcus gasped softly. With his next breath, a laugh burst from his chest.

Fuck you, AMTEC fuckers.

Todd fiddled with the needle and got the jewelry into the hole. He wiped away a bead of blood. The hole burned dully. Marcus grinned from ear to ear.

“Next one, okay?” Todd said.

Marcus nodded. Todd swiped the alcohol on his right earlobe, positioned the needle, and punctured. The pain felt like a miracle. Marcus’s foot jiggled. He couldn’t wait to see how it looked.

“Alright,” Todd said. “Nose can sometimes hurt more, sometimes hurt less.” He swiped the alcohol across Marcus’s nostril. “You ready?”

“Ready,” Marcus said through his toothy grin.

Todd positioned the needle. Marcus watched it go in. His right eye began to tear.

“You’re doing good,” Todd said. “Just have to get the stud in. You doing okay?”

“Yeah.” The pain was… fine. He welcomed the ache. He had damaged AMTEC property – punched three holes right through it. If he were an officer, he would be discharged for this.

If he were still a Lev, he’d be consigned.

He was marked for death for saving Jake and killing Aisha, of course, but… this was the first thing he’d ever done to himself that would earn consignment. Marcus gritted his teeth against the pressure as Todd worked the stud into the hole in his nose and pressed the jewelry into it. It felt so fucking good. He immediately wanted five more.

“Alright,” Todd said, retreating and stripping his gloves from his hands. Marcus slowly sat up. Todd picked up a mirror and handed it to Marcus. “Tell me what you think.”

Marcus stared blankly back at himself.

Even after two months out, he still wasn’t used to looking at himself in a mirror. Almost two decades of being deprived of that wouldn’t be done away with so easily. But – perhaps for the first time – he looked at his own face and began to recognize himself in what he saw.

His nostril looked red and angry, and so did his earlobes – but three small gunmetal studs winked at him from the holes punched in his skin. They looked like they belonged there. And he could see the immediate difference they had made. When he walked into this house, he was an AMTEC weapon, out for two months but still a Lev down to his DNA. Now he was… something else. The haunted look in his eyes could be explained by something else now – anything else. So could the short-cropped hair, and the scar on his neck.

His neck. He ran his fingers over the scar – and caught himself when he saw Todd’s eyes go wide. Todd said nothing, just took the mirror back from Marcus.

Marcus’s posture straightened. He could kill Todd here in this garage. Explaining it to Lars might take some doing, but it would be worth eliminating the risk to Jake.

Besides. Might as well test the new capability of his arm. It throbbed, from his shoulder to his fingertips.

Todd stared at the floor when he said, “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I guess… I have a lot to apologize for. To you.”

Marcus froze.

Todd shook his head. “All I can really say is… it’s not what I was trying to make. Not that it matters, when it was used to…” He shook his head again. “Anyway. I guess you already know. I’ll take you back to the house, then, and you can show them off.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said softly, his heart thrumming in his chest. Guilt welled in his throat. “Yeah, Todd. Thank you.”

They found Jake and Lars in the kitchen. Jake sat up and grinned at him. Lars’s fists shot into the air, and they crowed as if in victory.

“Yes! Todd, that looks amazing!” They drew in close – not close enough to touch – and peered at the piercings.

Marcus lifted his chin. “Tattoo next,” he said.

Lars nodded vigorously. “Absolutely. I’ll take you to my gal, she’s fantastic. She’ll be booked out for the next few weeks for sure, but…” They shrugged. “We’ll work you in.” They glanced at Todd. “What do we owe you? For…?”

For the first time, Todd flushed. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m not… no way. Not for…” His eyes flicked to the scar at Marcus’s neck. “Just the knowledge that you trusted me with this is enough. It’s… very, very chill.”

Jake took Marcus’s metal hand in his. Marcus gasped at how he could feel the touch now. And, he noted, whenever he was touched, the uncomfortable prickling went away entirely. He stared at their entwined fingers. “Back home?” Jake said softly.

“Yeah,” Marcus said. “Back home. You feeling okay?”

“I’m feeling good,” Jake said, tucking his head against Marcus’s shoulder.

Marcus felt alive as he followed Lars out of the house and to the car. The scar on his neck tingled. He already knew where he was going to get his first tattoo.

Continued here

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

Everyone at the clinic liked Marcus’s piercings. There was a nurse who worked there – Raye, the one who had put on the gas mask the first day Marcus showed up – who gave Marcus a smile and a thumbs up when he saw them. The patients in the waiting room seemed to like them, too; Marcus recognized them all, and he supposed they were starting to recognize him, too. Even Celeste cracked a smile as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nice,” she said. “You don’t look nearly so much like—”

“Celeste,” Lars sighed as they rolled their eyes.

She rolled hers right back. “Well. You don’t. It’s a good look.”

Jake just grinned.

Marcus followed Lars and Jake into the back of the clinic, rolling his shoulders and ignoring the phantom ache in his right arm. At this point he had tackled the storage room and the three patient rooms, as well as a different storage closet that he figured was probably left over from when this building had just been an office space. It held reams of copy paper, office supplies, holiday decorations, expired snacks, and piles of other junk that Marcus had combed through and organized until it looked as good as the rest of the clinic. The only room left to get through was Lars’s office. He figured it might take some convincing to let him organize that space. He wondered if he could simply lock them out until he was finished. They probably had other shit to do, anyway.

He glanced and Jake, wondering whose side he would take. He had to catch his breath. Jake was staring at him, looking better than he had since…

Since. He still had the slightest limp if someone was paying attention – and Marcus was always paying attention – but the bruises had faded. The brace was still on his forearm, but there was no other sign of the torture he’d survived for so long.

Except for when he smiled. His front tooth was still chipped, and probably would be forever. Marcus almost didn’t want to know what the men had done to him that had caused that. Maybe he would ask, one day. Or maybe Jake would tell him, when he was ready.

Jake took his metal hand. It ended the buzzing pain he hadn’t even realized had been gathering at the corners of his awareness. Jake squeezed; Marcus would have felt that, even before Todd adjusted the settings. But then Jake stroked his thumb back and forth against the back of Marcus’s hand, settling a brief wave of tingles. That, Marcus wouldn’t have felt until now. He – gently, carefully – squeezed back.

Marcus kissed his temple, and Jake melted against his side.

Lars dropped their keys on their desk with a sigh. Marcus eyed the piles of paper littering their desk, the floor, the shelves around them. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight from side to side.

“If you both are up to it,” Lars mumbled, “I didn’t have time to restock rooms when I left last night. Would you be willing to do that?”

Marcus glanced up. “Stock… rooms?” The piles of papers and boxes of syringes were so tantalizing. He already knew where he would start: there was a big pile of paper near the door with a sheet on top with giant letters scrawled across that said TO SHRED. It would be so easy. He would take those to the shredder, feed the papers through, then take the bags of paper bits out to the trash to make room in here for—

“Yeah, do you mind?” Lars said. “We’re out of almost everything. I think we’re entirely out of 21 gauges in the room closest to the waiting r—”

“Room one, yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I can…” He glanced around at the papers again. “If that’s… what you need…”

“What I need is about ten million credits a year, a full-time staff, and for every person who works at AMTEC to suck-start a shotgun, preferably on national fucking news,” Lars snapped. Marcus’s eyes flicked to theirs as he froze.

Jake drew in a deep breath. “Lars,” he said gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” they griped. “Just… I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just been a shitty week. Will you please just—”

“On it, yeah,” Marcus said, turning to go. A flush prickled across his cheeks and neck. He felt it again, that horrible urge: shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. And another urge: to flinch away from a raised hand, a baton, a whip.

Yes, sir.

Even though he knew Lars would never do that, never want that from him. Lars was the farthest person from an AMTEC officer Marcus had ever met.

Lars was exactly the type of person Marcus would have been sent to kill a few months ago. Quickly, quietly, so there would be no news footage. The news would spin a story from the aftermath anyway, like they were paid to. He’d seen it so many times.

Terrorists… Drug smuggling… Heroic AMTEC raid… No civilian casualties… Increasing AMTEC budget once again…

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the thought.

How many of the people I’ve killed were like Lars? Like Celeste and Todd?

Like Jake?

Jake squeezed his hand once more, startling him out of his reverie. “They’re just having a bad day,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

Marcus pressed an absent-minded kiss to Jake’s cheek. “I know,” he said. “I know that.” He headed into a room. “I’ll start on this one, you start on the next?”

Jake held onto his hand and pulled him up short. “Sure,” he said, giving Marcus one last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

Marcus blew out a slow breath as he trudged to the first cabinet and opened it. Things inside weren’t as bad as Lars made them out to be; they still had enough linens to get through four patients, and enough syringes to probably get through the entire evening. But Lars liked things a certain way. Marcus supposed he could understand that. He opened the next cabinet. There was no extra butcher paper for the exam table. That, he conceded, was a more immediate problem.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His head turned toward the paper-over window before he even realized what he was listening for.

Then the noise happened again: footsteps. Outside. Near the back of the building, where no patients had any reason to be.

He stepped out of the clinic room, flexing his metal hand. “Jake,” he said flatly from the hallway. “Get everyone into the back. Now.”

He didn’t turn to see if he would be obeyed. He knew he would be. He’d trained Jake too well for any other outcome.

He stalked down the hallway and through the lobby. Celeste glanced up at him and fell silent at the look on his face.

“Get everyone in the back now,” he said.

She wordlessly rose. The two patients in the waiting room didn’t move. Marcus ignored them. Everyone had their orders. Now he had his role. He pushed the doors open and snuck soundlessly out into the evening.

He’d heard the footsteps on the north side of the building, so that’s where he headed. If they were circling the building, or if there was more than one, well—

He told Jake to keep the others safe in the back. Marcus just had to make sure no one got that far. Not when Jake was still hurt. Not when he was still—

I never wanted him to have to fight again.

He crushed that thought. At the moment, it was irrelevant.

Overgrown bushes lined the northeast corner of the building, and so he immediately ducked into them. He shuddered as the branches trailed along his metal arm, sparking bizarre sensations.

He felt naked without his gun, or at least his knife. But he’d killed with his bare hands before.

A few yards away, gravel crunched under someone’s shoe – and it was definitely a shoe. Not a tac boot.

That was something, at least.

A metallic rattling sound.

A curse.

Marcus registered all these sounds, doing his best to pinpoint the assailant in space before he struck. He hoped there was only one.

If there wasn’t, at least he had warned the others.

He launched himself out of the bushes and closed the distance to the assailant in two quick strides. The man – maybe about Lars’s age – cried out as Marcus tackled him to the ground. The spray paint can flew from his hands as Marcus twisted both arms behind him.

“Agh! Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know anyone was—” He cut himself off with a gasp as Marcus’s metal hand compressed his wrist.

A storm raged in Marcus’s head. Habit – more than habit, it was training, repetition, instinct – battered at him, bent his body toward a specific shape. Gun, if no gun then knife, if no knife then strike the face and neck. Execute and move. Execute and move. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to kill this man. He couldn’t remember who sent him outside. Had he done that on his own? He wasn’t allowed to self-deploy, not unless that was specifically stated in the mission objectives. Had someone ordered this man’s death? Had someone ordered him to kill any hostiles he came across?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

He needed clarification. Unauthorized executions by Levs were punishable by consignment. He had to seek further orders.

Back inside it was, then.

Marcus wordlessly wrestled the man to his feet. The man was pleading, sobbing, but Marcus didn’t hear it. He had learned not to hear it, when people begged for mercy – not that people often lived long enough to beg, with him. He was so, so good at this. He grabbed the man’s wrists in metal hand and seized the collar of his shirt in his other, shoving him toward the clinic entrance. He figured it didn’t much matter if the man saw the inside of the clinic. Once Marcus got clearance to dispatch him, he’d do it, quickly. Maybe he would be given his gun back. He wasn’t sure where it was. He’d be whipped for that. He might get worse than a whipping.

He released the man’s collar only for long enough to yank open the door and shove him ahead of him. He could feel the man’s wrists bruising under his grip. Cuffs would have been easier, but he didn’t seem to have those, either. He had fucked up with his equipment, and badly. Why the fuck didn’t I pack for this mission properly? His mind flitted to Jake. But no, he would have checked everything to make sure his trainee didn’t fuck them over this badly. This was his fault, whatever had happened.

Whatever had happened, he was going to be punished for it. He was going to be beaten. Depending on who the XO for this mission was, he might just find himself bent over a table for it. But if he hid – if he avoided the consequences – it would be so much worse. And if he just killed this man and hid the evidence of his failure… He shuddered to even imagine. The sooner he handled this absolutely massive fuckup and dealt with the consequences, the sooner he could—

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen after that. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. He shoved the man forward anyway, approached the door leading into the back of the clinic the base, and knocked. The door was locked. He knew he should wait.

“M-Marcus?” came the shaking voice from behind the door.

He… knew he shouldn’t answer to that name, that he should answer to Levy Unit C9I4M3, but that was the name that had been used. “Yes,” he croaked. “I have the assailant. Permission to execute.”

The door swung open, and Marcus stared into Jake’s eyes. He blinked.

Lars stood right behind Jake. Marcus shook himself. That’s who he reported to. He’d forgotten for a moment. He lifted his head and cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I need clarification on my orders.”

“Stop,” Lars breathed. “Marcus… Who the fuck is this?”

The man started blubbering. “M-my name is Tobias, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me, I didn’t know what this place was, I was just… I didn’t realize it was… oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was AMTEC, I didn’t know, I swear to g—”

“We’re not AMTEC,” Lars said, pushing past Jake. “Marcus, let him go—”

The man squirmed in Marcus’s grasp. Marcus’s brows pulled together. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d never – ever – been told to release a captive before. AMTEC’s prisoners got put down, or put in a hole. That’s how it worked.

Perhaps he’d misheard.

He shoved the man to his knees. His arms were pulled back in Marcus’s grip, and he cried out, rocking forward to relieve the pressure.

“Sir,” Marcus said. “I… I apologize for my sloppiness, in letting him get so close. But I… n-need clarification.” They were going to think he was stupid. And stupid Levs got consigned. But if he didn’t ask, they weren’t going to tell him, and releasing a prisoner into the base seemed like a profoundly stupid idea, even if it had been ordered by a superior officer. “Do I… have permission to execute—”

“Marcus,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, you need to look around, okay? We’re not in AMTEC anymore. You don’t have to—”

Rage surged through Marcus. Jake was going to get them both killed. He twisted the man’s wrists up, forcing him to bend further forward. He sobbed into the floor.

Lars lunged forward, hand raised toward the man. “Marcus!” they snapped, sounding to all the world like someone correcting a disobedient dog. “Marcus, enough.”

Marcus let the man go. Shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. Lars yanked their hand back like they’d been scalded. Jake just looked at Marcus with an unreadable expression.

No. Not unreadable. It was pity, written across his features clear as day.

“Fuck,” Marcus breathed. He took a halting step back. There was no one else in the hallway; the clinic doors were all closed, and he suspected all the patients and nurses had barricaded themselves inside. That’s where he was: the HRT clinic. He was at the clinic. Not the base.

The man sobbing at his feet wasn’t AMTEC. He didn’t look like a patient, either; his clothes looked dirty, but they were well-fitting and expensive looking. Marcus watched as Lars knelt down and grasped his shoulders, helping him sit up. There were dark bruises on his wrists where Marcus had held him.

The horror didn’t quite land, though. Not until his eyes returned to Jake’s, and he saw tears there.

Heat flooded his throat.

“Marcus,” Jake said softly.

Marcus didn’t wait for whatever Jake had been about to say. He turned and ran.

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

Everyone at the clinic liked Marcus’s piercings. There was a nurse who worked there – Raye, the one who had put on the gas mask the first day Marcus showed up – who gave Marcus a smile and a thumbs up when he saw them. The patients in the waiting room seemed to like them, too; Marcus recognized them all, and he supposed they were starting to recognize him, too. Even Celeste cracked a smile as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nice,” she said. “You don’t look nearly so much like—”

“Celeste,” Lars sighed as they rolled their eyes.

She rolled hers right back. “Well. You don’t. It’s a good look.”

Jake just grinned.

Marcus followed Lars and Jake into the back of the clinic, rolling his shoulders and ignoring the phantom ache in his right arm. At this point he had tackled the storage room and the three patient rooms, as well as a different storage closet that he figured was probably left over from when this building had just been an office space. It held reams of copy paper, office supplies, holiday decorations, expired snacks, and piles of other junk that Marcus had combed through and organized until it looked as good as the rest of the clinic. The only room left to get through was Lars’s office. He figured it might take some convincing to let him organize that space. He wondered if he could simply lock them out until he was finished. They probably had other shit to do, anyway.

He glanced and Jake, wondering whose side he would take. He had to catch his breath. Jake was staring at him, looking better than he had since…

Since. He still had the slightest limp if someone was paying attention – and Marcus was always paying attention – but the bruises had faded. The brace was still on his forearm, but there was no other sign of the torture he’d survived for so long.

Except for when he smiled. His front tooth was still chipped, and probably would be forever. Marcus almost didn’t want to know what the men had done to him that had caused that. Maybe he would ask, one day. Or maybe Jake would tell him, when he was ready.

Jake took his metal hand. It ended the buzzing pain he hadn’t even realized had been gathering at the corners of his awareness. Jake squeezed; Marcus would have felt that, even before Todd adjusted the settings. But then Jake stroked his thumb back and forth against the back of Marcus’s hand, settling a brief wave of tingles. That, Marcus wouldn’t have felt until now. He – gently, carefully – squeezed back.

Marcus kissed his temple, and Jake melted against his side.

Lars dropped their keys on their desk with a sigh. Marcus eyed the piles of paper littering their desk, the floor, the shelves around them. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight from side to side.

“If you both are up to it,” Lars mumbled, “I didn’t have time to restock rooms when I left last night. Would you be willing to do that?”

Marcus glanced up. “Stock… rooms?” The piles of papers and boxes of syringes were so tantalizing. He already knew where he would start: there was a big pile of paper near the door with a sheet on top with giant letters scrawled across that said TO SHRED. It would be so easy. He would take those to the shredder, feed the papers through, then take the bags of paper bits out to the trash to make room in here for—

“Yeah, do you mind?” Lars said. “We’re out of almost everything. I think we’re entirely out of 21 gauges in the room closest to the waiting r—”

“Room one, yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I can…” He glanced around at the papers again. “If that’s… what you need…”

“What I need is about ten million credits a year, a full-time staff, and for every person who works at AMTEC to suck-start a shotgun, preferably on national fucking news,” Lars snapped. Marcus’s eyes flicked to theirs as he froze.

Jake drew in a deep breath. “Lars,” he said gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” they griped. “Just… I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just been a shitty week. Will you please just—”

“On it, yeah,” Marcus said, turning to go. A flush prickled across his cheeks and neck. He felt it again, that horrible urge: shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. And another urge: to flinch away from a raised hand, a baton, a whip.

Yes, sir.

Even though he knew Lars would never do that, never want that from him. Lars was the farthest person from an AMTEC officer Marcus had ever met.

Lars was exactly the type of person Marcus would have been sent to kill a few months ago. Quickly, quietly, so there would be no news footage. The news would spin a story from the aftermath anyway, like they were paid to. He’d seen it so many times.

Terrorists… Drug smuggling… Heroic AMTEC raid… No civilian casualties… Increasing AMTEC budget once again…

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the thought.

How many of the people I’ve killed were like Lars? Like Celeste and Todd?

Like Jake?

Jake squeezed his hand once more, startling him out of his reverie. “They’re just having a bad day,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

Marcus pressed an absent-minded kiss to Jake’s cheek. “I know,” he said. “I know that.” He headed into a room. “I’ll start on this one, you start on the next?”

Jake held onto his hand and pulled him up short. “Sure,” he said, giving Marcus one last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

Marcus blew out a slow breath as he trudged to the first cabinet and opened it. Things inside weren’t as bad as Lars made them out to be; they still had enough linens to get through four patients, and enough syringes to probably get through the entire evening. But Lars liked things a certain way. Marcus supposed he could understand that. He opened the next cabinet. There was no extra butcher paper for the exam table. That, he conceded, was a more immediate problem.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His head turned toward the paper-over window before he even realized what he was listening for.

Then the noise happened again: footsteps. Outside. Near the back of the building, where no patients had any reason to be.

He stepped out of the clinic room, flexing his metal hand. “Jake,” he said flatly from the hallway. “Get everyone into the back. Now.”

He didn’t turn to see if he would be obeyed. He knew he would be. He’d trained Jake too well for any other outcome.

He stalked down the hallway and through the lobby. Celeste glanced up at him and fell silent at the look on his face.

“Get everyone in the back now,” he said.

She wordlessly rose. The two patients in the waiting room didn’t move. Marcus ignored them. Everyone had their orders. Now he had his role. He pushed the doors open and snuck soundlessly out into the evening.

He’d heard the footsteps on the north side of the building, so that’s where he headed. If they were circling the building, or if there was more than one, well—

He told Jake to keep the others safe in the back. Marcus just had to make sure no one got that far. Not when Jake was still hurt. Not when he was still—

I never wanted him to have to fight again.

He crushed that thought. At the moment, it was irrelevant.

Overgrown bushes lined the northeast corner of the building, and so he immediately ducked into them. He shuddered as the branches trailed along his metal arm, sparking bizarre sensations.

He felt naked without his gun, or at least his knife. But he’d killed with his bare hands before.

A few yards away, gravel crunched under someone’s shoe – and it was definitely a shoe. Not a tac boot.

That was something, at least.

A metallic rattling sound.

A curse.

Marcus registered all these sounds, doing his best to pinpoint the assailant in space before he struck. He hoped there was only one.

If there wasn’t, at least he had warned the others.

He launched himself out of the bushes and closed the distance to the assailant in two quick strides. The man – maybe about Lars’s age – cried out as Marcus tackled him to the ground. The spray paint can flew from his hands as Marcus twisted both arms behind him.

“Agh! Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know anyone was—” He cut himself off with a gasp as Marcus’s metal hand compressed his wrist.

A storm raged in Marcus’s head. Habit – more than habit, it was training, repetition, instinct – battered at him, bent his body toward a specific shape. Gun, if no gun then knife, if no knife then strike the face and neck. Execute and move. Execute and move. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to kill this man. He couldn’t remember who sent him outside. Had he done that on his own? He wasn’t allowed to self-deploy, not unless that was specifically stated in the mission objectives. Had someone ordered this man’s death? Had someone ordered him to kill any hostiles he came across?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

He needed clarification. Unauthorized executions by Levs were punishable by consignment. He had to seek further orders.

Back inside it was, then.

Marcus wordlessly wrestled the man to his feet. The man was pleading, sobbing, but Marcus didn’t hear it. He had learned not to hear it, when people begged for mercy – not that people often lived long enough to beg, with him. He was so, so good at this. He grabbed the man’s wrists in metal hand and seized the collar of his shirt in his other, shoving him toward the clinic entrance. He figured it didn’t much matter if the man saw the inside of the clinic. Once Marcus got clearance to dispatch him, he’d do it, quickly. Maybe he would be given his gun back. He wasn’t sure where it was. He’d be whipped for that. He might get worse than a whipping.

He released the man’s collar only for long enough to yank open the door and shove him ahead of him. He could feel the man’s wrists bruising under his grip. Cuffs would have been easier, but he didn’t seem to have those, either. He had fucked up with his equipment, and badly. Why the fuck didn’t I pack for this mission properly? His mind flitted to Jake. But no, he would have checked everything to make sure his trainee didn’t fuck them over this badly. This was his fault, whatever had happened.

Whatever had happened, he was going to be punished for it. He was going to be beaten. Depending on who the XO for this mission was, he might just find himself bent over a table for it. But if he hid – if he avoided the consequences – it would be so much worse. And if he just killed this man and hid the evidence of his failure… He shuddered to even imagine. The sooner he handled this absolutely massive fuckup and dealt with the consequences, the sooner he could—

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen after that. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. He shoved the man forward anyway, approached the door leading into the back of the clinic the base, and knocked. The door was locked. He knew he should wait.

“M-Marcus?” came the shaking voice from behind the door.

He… knew he shouldn’t answer to that name, that he should answer to Levy Unit C9I4M3, but that was the name that had been used. “Yes,” he croaked. “I have the assailant. Permission to execute.”

The door swung open, and Marcus stared into Jake’s eyes. He blinked.

Lars stood right behind Jake. Marcus shook himself. That’s who he reported to. He’d forgotten for a moment. He lifted his head and cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I need clarification on my orders.”

“Stop,” Lars breathed. “Marcus… Who the fuck is this?”

The man started blubbering. “M-my name is Tobias, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me, I didn’t know what this place was, I was just… I didn’t realize it was… oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was AMTEC, I didn’t know, I swear to g—”

“We’re not AMTEC,” Lars said, pushing past Jake. “Marcus, let him go—”

The man squirmed in Marcus’s grasp. Marcus’s brows pulled together. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d never – ever – been told to release a captive before. AMTEC’s prisoners got put down, or put in a hole. That’s how it worked.

Perhaps he’d misheard.

He shoved the man to his knees. His arms were pulled back in Marcus’s grip, and he cried out, rocking forward to relieve the pressure.

“Sir,” Marcus said. “I… I apologize for my sloppiness, in letting him get so close. But I… n-need clarification.” They were going to think he was stupid. And stupid Levs got consigned. But if he didn’t ask, they weren’t going to tell him, and releasing a prisoner into the base seemed like a profoundly stupid idea, even if it had been ordered by a superior officer. “Do I… have permission to execute—”

“Marcus,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, you need to look around, okay? We’re not in AMTEC anymore. You don’t have to—”

Rage surged through Marcus. Jake was going to get them both killed. He twisted the man’s wrists up, forcing him to bend further forward. He sobbed into the floor.

Lars lunged forward, hand raised toward the man. “Marcus!” they snapped, sounding to all the world like someone correcting a disobedient dog. “Marcus, enough.”

Marcus let the man go. Shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. Lars yanked their hand back like they’d been scalded. Jake just looked at Marcus with an unreadable expression.

No. Not unreadable. It was pity, written across his features clear as day.

“Fuck,” Marcus breathed. He took a halting step back. There was no one else in the hallway; the clinic doors were all closed, and he suspected all the patients and nurses had barricaded themselves inside. That’s where he was: the HRT clinic. He was at the clinic. Not the base.

The man sobbing at his feet wasn’t AMTEC. He didn’t look like a patient, either; his clothes looked dirty, but they were well-fitting and expensive looking. Marcus watched as Lars knelt down and grasped his shoulders, helping him sit up. There were dark bruises on his wrists where Marcus had held him.

The horror didn’t quite land, though. Not until his eyes returned to Jake’s, and he saw tears there.

Heat flooded his throat.

“Marcus,” Jake said softly.

Marcus didn’t wait for whatever Jake had been about to say. He turned and ran.

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

Everyone at the clinic liked Marcus’s piercings. There was a nurse who worked there – Raye, the one who had put on the gas mask the first day Marcus showed up – who gave Marcus a smile and a thumbs up when he saw them. The patients in the waiting room seemed to like them, too; Marcus recognized them all, and he supposed they were starting to recognize him, too. Even Celeste cracked a smile as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nice,” she said. “You don’t look nearly so much like—”

“Celeste,” Lars sighed as they rolled their eyes.

She rolled hers right back. “Well. You don’t. It’s a good look.”

Jake just grinned.

Marcus followed Lars and Jake into the back of the clinic, rolling his shoulders and ignoring the phantom ache in his right arm. At this point he had tackled the storage room and the three patient rooms, as well as a different storage closet that he figured was probably left over from when this building had just been an office space. It held reams of copy paper, office supplies, holiday decorations, expired snacks, and piles of other junk that Marcus had combed through and organized until it looked as good as the rest of the clinic. The only room left to get through was Lars’s office. He figured it might take some convincing to let him organize that space. He wondered if he could simply lock them out until he was finished. They probably had other shit to do, anyway.

He glanced and Jake, wondering whose side he would take. He had to catch his breath. Jake was staring at him, looking better than he had since…

Since. He still had the slightest limp if someone was paying attention – and Marcus was always paying attention – but the bruises had faded. The brace was still on his forearm, but there was no other sign of the torture he’d survived for so long.

Except for when he smiled. His front tooth was still chipped, and probably would be forever. Marcus almost didn’t want to know what the men had done to him that had caused that. Maybe he would ask, one day. Or maybe Jake would tell him, when he was ready.

Jake took his metal hand. It ended the buzzing pain he hadn’t even realized had been gathering at the corners of his awareness. Jake squeezed; Marcus would have felt that, even before Todd adjusted the settings. But then Jake stroked his thumb back and forth against the back of Marcus’s hand, settling a brief wave of tingles. That, Marcus wouldn’t have felt until now. He – gently, carefully – squeezed back.

Marcus kissed his temple, and Jake melted against his side.

Lars dropped their keys on their desk with a sigh. Marcus eyed the piles of paper littering their desk, the floor, the shelves around them. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight from side to side.

“If you both are up to it,” Lars mumbled, “I didn’t have time to restock rooms when I left last night. Would you be willing to do that?”

Marcus glanced up. “Stock… rooms?” The piles of papers and boxes of syringes were so tantalizing. He already knew where he would start: there was a big pile of paper near the door with a sheet on top with giant letters scrawled across that said TO SHRED. It would be so easy. He would take those to the shredder, feed the papers through, then take the bags of paper bits out to the trash to make room in here for—

“Yeah, do you mind?” Lars said. “We’re out of almost everything. I think we’re entirely out of 21 gauges in the room closest to the waiting r—”

“Room one, yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I can…” He glanced around at the papers again. “If that’s… what you need…”

“What I need is about ten million credits a year, a full-time staff, and for every person who works at AMTEC to suck-start a shotgun, preferably on national fucking news,” Lars snapped. Marcus’s eyes flicked to theirs as he froze.

Jake drew in a deep breath. “Lars,” he said gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” they griped. “Just… I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just been a shitty week. Will you please just—”

“On it, yeah,” Marcus said, turning to go. A flush prickled across his cheeks and neck. He felt it again, that horrible urge: shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. And another urge: to flinch away from a raised hand, a baton, a whip.

Yes, sir.

Even though he knew Lars would never do that, never want that from him. Lars was the farthest person from an AMTEC officer Marcus had ever met.

Lars was exactly the type of person Marcus would have been sent to kill a few months ago. Quickly, quietly, so there would be no news footage. The news would spin a story from the aftermath anyway, like they were paid to. He’d seen it so many times.

Terrorists… Drug smuggling… Heroic AMTEC raid… No civilian casualties… Increasing AMTEC budget once again…

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the thought.

How many of the people I’ve killed were like Lars? Like Celeste and Todd?

Like Jake?

Jake squeezed his hand once more, startling him out of his reverie. “They’re just having a bad day,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

Marcus pressed an absent-minded kiss to Jake’s cheek. “I know,” he said. “I know that.” He headed into a room. “I’ll start on this one, you start on the next?”

Jake held onto his hand and pulled him up short. “Sure,” he said, giving Marcus one last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

Marcus blew out a slow breath as he trudged to the first cabinet and opened it. Things inside weren’t as bad as Lars made them out to be; they still had enough linens to get through four patients, and enough syringes to probably get through the entire evening. But Lars liked things a certain way. Marcus supposed he could understand that. He opened the next cabinet. There was no extra butcher paper for the exam table. That, he conceded, was a more immediate problem.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His head turned toward the paper-over window before he even realized what he was listening for.

Then the noise happened again: footsteps. Outside. Near the back of the building, where no patients had any reason to be.

He stepped out of the clinic room, flexing his metal hand. “Jake,” he said flatly from the hallway. “Get everyone into the back. Now.”

He didn’t turn to see if he would be obeyed. He knew he would be. He’d trained Jake too well for any other outcome.

He stalked down the hallway and through the lobby. Celeste glanced up at him and fell silent at the look on his face.

“Get everyone in the back now,” he said.

She wordlessly rose. The two patients in the waiting room didn’t move. Marcus ignored them. Everyone had their orders. Now he had his role. He pushed the doors open and snuck soundlessly out into the evening.

He’d heard the footsteps on the north side of the building, so that’s where he headed. If they were circling the building, or if there was more than one, well—

He told Jake to keep the others safe in the back. Marcus just had to make sure no one got that far. Not when Jake was still hurt. Not when he was still—

I never wanted him to have to fight again.

He crushed that thought. At the moment, it was irrelevant.

Overgrown bushes lined the northeast corner of the building, and so he immediately ducked into them. He shuddered as the branches trailed along his metal arm, sparking bizarre sensations.

He felt naked without his gun, or at least his knife. But he’d killed with his bare hands before.

A few yards away, gravel crunched under someone’s shoe – and it was definitely a shoe. Not a tac boot.

That was something, at least.

A metallic rattling sound.

A curse.

Marcus registered all these sounds, doing his best to pinpoint the assailant in space before he struck. He hoped there was only one.

If there wasn’t, at least he had warned the others.

He launched himself out of the bushes and closed the distance to the assailant in two quick strides. The man – maybe about Lars’s age – cried out as Marcus tackled him to the ground. The spray paint can flew from his hands as Marcus twisted both arms behind him.

“Agh! Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know anyone was—” He cut himself off with a gasp as Marcus’s metal hand compressed his wrist.

A storm raged in Marcus’s head. Habit – more than habit, it was training, repetition, instinct – battered at him, bent his body toward a specific shape. Gun, if no gun then knife, if no knife then strike the face and neck. Execute and move. Execute and move. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to kill this man. He couldn’t remember who sent him outside. Had he done that on his own? He wasn’t allowed to self-deploy, not unless that was specifically stated in the mission objectives. Had someone ordered this man’s death? Had someone ordered him to kill any hostiles he came across?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

He needed clarification. Unauthorized executions by Levs were punishable by consignment. He had to seek further orders.

Back inside it was, then.

Marcus wordlessly wrestled the man to his feet. The man was pleading, sobbing, but Marcus didn’t hear it. He had learned not to hear it, when people begged for mercy – not that people often lived long enough to beg, with him. He was so, so good at this. He grabbed the man’s wrists in metal hand and seized the collar of his shirt in his other, shoving him toward the clinic entrance. He figured it didn’t much matter if the man saw the inside of the clinic. Once Marcus got clearance to dispatch him, he’d do it, quickly. Maybe he would be given his gun back. He wasn’t sure where it was. He’d be whipped for that. He might get worse than a whipping.

He released the man’s collar only for long enough to yank open the door and shove him ahead of him. He could feel the man’s wrists bruising under his grip. Cuffs would have been easier, but he didn’t seem to have those, either. He had fucked up with his equipment, and badly. Why the fuck didn’t I pack for this mission properly? His mind flitted to Jake. But no, he would have checked everything to make sure his trainee didn’t fuck them over this badly. This was his fault, whatever had happened.

Whatever had happened, he was going to be punished for it. He was going to be beaten. Depending on who the XO for this mission was, he might just find himself bent over a table for it. But if he hid – if he avoided the consequences – it would be so much worse. And if he just killed this man and hid the evidence of his failure… He shuddered to even imagine. The sooner he handled this absolutely massive fuckup and dealt with the consequences, the sooner he could—

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen after that. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. He shoved the man forward anyway, approached the door leading into the back of the clinic the base, and knocked. The door was locked. He knew he should wait.

“M-Marcus?” came the shaking voice from behind the door.

He… knew he shouldn’t answer to that name, that he should answer to Levy Unit C9I4M3, but that was the name that had been used. “Yes,” he croaked. “I have the assailant. Permission to execute.”

The door swung open, and Marcus stared into Jake’s eyes. He blinked.

Lars stood right behind Jake. Marcus shook himself. That’s who he reported to. He’d forgotten for a moment. He lifted his head and cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I need clarification on my orders.”

“Stop,” Lars breathed. “Marcus… Who the fuck is this?”

The man started blubbering. “M-my name is Tobias, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me, I didn’t know what this place was, I was just… I didn’t realize it was… oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was AMTEC, I didn’t know, I swear to g—”

“We’re not AMTEC,” Lars said, pushing past Jake. “Marcus, let him go—”

The man squirmed in Marcus’s grasp. Marcus’s brows pulled together. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d never – ever – been told to release a captive before. AMTEC’s prisoners got put down, or put in a hole. That’s how it worked.

Perhaps he’d misheard.

He shoved the man to his knees. His arms were pulled back in Marcus’s grip, and he cried out, rocking forward to relieve the pressure.

“Sir,” Marcus said. “I… I apologize for my sloppiness, in letting him get so close. But I… n-need clarification.” They were going to think he was stupid. And stupid Levs got consigned. But if he didn’t ask, they weren’t going to tell him, and releasing a prisoner into the base seemed like a profoundly stupid idea, even if it had been ordered by a superior officer. “Do I… have permission to execute—”

“Marcus,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, you need to look around, okay? We’re not in AMTEC anymore. You don’t have to—”

Rage surged through Marcus. Jake was going to get them both killed. He twisted the man’s wrists up, forcing him to bend further forward. He sobbed into the floor.

Lars lunged forward, hand raised toward the man. “Marcus!” they snapped, sounding to all the world like someone correcting a disobedient dog. “Marcus, enough.”

Marcus let the man go. Shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. Lars yanked their hand back like they’d been scalded. Jake just looked at Marcus with an unreadable expression.

No. Not unreadable. It was pity, written across his features clear as day.

“Fuck,” Marcus breathed. He took a halting step back. There was no one else in the hallway; the clinic doors were all closed, and he suspected all the patients and nurses had barricaded themselves inside. That’s where he was: the HRT clinic. He was at the clinic. Not the base.

The man sobbing at his feet wasn’t AMTEC. He didn’t look like a patient, either; his clothes looked dirty, but they were well-fitting and expensive looking. Marcus watched as Lars knelt down and grasped his shoulders, helping him sit up. There were dark bruises on his wrists where Marcus had held him.

The horror didn’t quite land, though. Not until his eyes returned to Jake’s, and he saw tears there.

Heat flooded his throat.

“Marcus,” Jake said softly.

Marcus didn’t wait for whatever Jake had been about to say. He turned and ran.

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

Everyone at the clinic liked Marcus’s piercings. There was a nurse who worked there – Raye, the one who had put on the gas mask the first day Marcus showed up – who gave Marcus a smile and a thumbs up when he saw them. The patients in the waiting room seemed to like them, too; Marcus recognized them all, and he supposed they were starting to recognize him, too. Even Celeste cracked a smile as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nice,” she said. “You don’t look nearly so much like—”

“Celeste,” Lars sighed as they rolled their eyes.

She rolled hers right back. “Well. You don’t. It’s a good look.”

Jake just grinned.

Marcus followed Lars and Jake into the back of the clinic, rolling his shoulders and ignoring the phantom ache in his right arm. At this point he had tackled the storage room and the three patient rooms, as well as a different storage closet that he figured was probably left over from when this building had just been an office space. It held reams of copy paper, office supplies, holiday decorations, expired snacks, and piles of other junk that Marcus had combed through and organized until it looked as good as the rest of the clinic. The only room left to get through was Lars’s office. He figured it might take some convincing to let him organize that space. He wondered if he could simply lock them out until he was finished. They probably had other shit to do, anyway.

He glanced and Jake, wondering whose side he would take. He had to catch his breath. Jake was staring at him, looking better than he had since…

Since. He still had the slightest limp if someone was paying attention – and Marcus was always paying attention – but the bruises had faded. The brace was still on his forearm, but there was no other sign of the torture he’d survived for so long.

Except for when he smiled. His front tooth was still chipped, and probably would be forever. Marcus almost didn’t want to know what the men had done to him that had caused that. Maybe he would ask, one day. Or maybe Jake would tell him, when he was ready.

Jake took his metal hand. It ended the buzzing pain he hadn’t even realized had been gathering at the corners of his awareness. Jake squeezed; Marcus would have felt that, even before Todd adjusted the settings. But then Jake stroked his thumb back and forth against the back of Marcus’s hand, settling a brief wave of tingles. That, Marcus wouldn’t have felt until now. He – gently, carefully – squeezed back.

Marcus kissed his temple, and Jake melted against his side.

Lars dropped their keys on their desk with a sigh. Marcus eyed the piles of paper littering their desk, the floor, the shelves around them. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight from side to side.

“If you both are up to it,” Lars mumbled, “I didn’t have time to restock rooms when I left last night. Would you be willing to do that?”

Marcus glanced up. “Stock… rooms?” The piles of papers and boxes of syringes were so tantalizing. He already knew where he would start: there was a big pile of paper near the door with a sheet on top with giant letters scrawled across that said TO SHRED. It would be so easy. He would take those to the shredder, feed the papers through, then take the bags of paper bits out to the trash to make room in here for—

“Yeah, do you mind?” Lars said. “We’re out of almost everything. I think we’re entirely out of 21 gauges in the room closest to the waiting r—”

“Room one, yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I can…” He glanced around at the papers again. “If that’s… what you need…”

“What I need is about ten million credits a year, a full-time staff, and for every person who works at AMTEC to suck-start a shotgun, preferably on national fucking news,” Lars snapped. Marcus’s eyes flicked to theirs as he froze.

Jake drew in a deep breath. “Lars,” he said gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” they griped. “Just… I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just been a shitty week. Will you please just—”

“On it, yeah,” Marcus said, turning to go. A flush prickled across his cheeks and neck. He felt it again, that horrible urge: shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. And another urge: to flinch away from a raised hand, a baton, a whip.

Yes, sir.

Even though he knew Lars would never do that, never want that from him. Lars was the farthest person from an AMTEC officer Marcus had ever met.

Lars was exactly the type of person Marcus would have been sent to kill a few months ago. Quickly, quietly, so there would be no news footage. The news would spin a story from the aftermath anyway, like they were paid to. He’d seen it so many times.

Terrorists… Drug smuggling… Heroic AMTEC raid… No civilian casualties… Increasing AMTEC budget once again…

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the thought.

How many of the people I’ve killed were like Lars? Like Celeste and Todd?

Like Jake?

Jake squeezed his hand once more, startling him out of his reverie. “They’re just having a bad day,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

Marcus pressed an absent-minded kiss to Jake’s cheek. “I know,” he said. “I know that.” He headed into a room. “I’ll start on this one, you start on the next?”

Jake held onto his hand and pulled him up short. “Sure,” he said, giving Marcus one last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

Marcus blew out a slow breath as he trudged to the first cabinet and opened it. Things inside weren’t as bad as Lars made them out to be; they still had enough linens to get through four patients, and enough syringes to probably get through the entire evening. But Lars liked things a certain way. Marcus supposed he could understand that. He opened the next cabinet. There was no extra butcher paper for the exam table. That, he conceded, was a more immediate problem.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His head turned toward the paper-over window before he even realized what he was listening for.

Then the noise happened again: footsteps. Outside. Near the back of the building, where no patients had any reason to be.

He stepped out of the clinic room, flexing his metal hand. “Jake,” he said flatly from the hallway. “Get everyone into the back. Now.”

He didn’t turn to see if he would be obeyed. He knew he would be. He’d trained Jake too well for any other outcome.

He stalked down the hallway and through the lobby. Celeste glanced up at him and fell silent at the look on his face.

“Get everyone in the back now,” he said.

She wordlessly rose. The two patients in the waiting room didn’t move. Marcus ignored them. Everyone had their orders. Now he had his role. He pushed the doors open and snuck soundlessly out into the evening.

He’d heard the footsteps on the north side of the building, so that’s where he headed. If they were circling the building, or if there was more than one, well—

He told Jake to keep the others safe in the back. Marcus just had to make sure no one got that far. Not when Jake was still hurt. Not when he was still—

I never wanted him to have to fight again.

He crushed that thought. At the moment, it was irrelevant.

Overgrown bushes lined the northeast corner of the building, and so he immediately ducked into them. He shuddered as the branches trailed along his metal arm, sparking bizarre sensations.

He felt naked without his gun, or at least his knife. But he’d killed with his bare hands before.

A few yards away, gravel crunched under someone’s shoe – and it was definitely a shoe. Not a tac boot.

That was something, at least.

A metallic rattling sound.

A curse.

Marcus registered all these sounds, doing his best to pinpoint the assailant in space before he struck. He hoped there was only one.

If there wasn’t, at least he had warned the others.

He launched himself out of the bushes and closed the distance to the assailant in two quick strides. The man – maybe about Lars’s age – cried out as Marcus tackled him to the ground. The spray paint can flew from his hands as Marcus twisted both arms behind him.

“Agh! Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know anyone was—” He cut himself off with a gasp as Marcus’s metal hand compressed his wrist.

A storm raged in Marcus’s head. Habit – more than habit, it was training, repetition, instinct – battered at him, bent his body toward a specific shape. Gun, if no gun then knife, if no knife then strike the face and neck. Execute and move. Execute and move. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to kill this man. He couldn’t remember who sent him outside. Had he done that on his own? He wasn’t allowed to self-deploy, not unless that was specifically stated in the mission objectives. Had someone ordered this man’s death? Had someone ordered him to kill any hostiles he came across?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

He needed clarification. Unauthorized executions by Levs were punishable by consignment. He had to seek further orders.

Back inside it was, then.

Marcus wordlessly wrestled the man to his feet. The man was pleading, sobbing, but Marcus didn’t hear it. He had learned not to hear it, when people begged for mercy – not that people often lived long enough to beg, with him. He was so, so good at this. He grabbed the man’s wrists in metal hand and seized the collar of his shirt in his other, shoving him toward the clinic entrance. He figured it didn’t much matter if the man saw the inside of the clinic. Once Marcus got clearance to dispatch him, he’d do it, quickly. Maybe he would be given his gun back. He wasn’t sure where it was. He’d be whipped for that. He might get worse than a whipping.

He released the man’s collar only for long enough to yank open the door and shove him ahead of him. He could feel the man’s wrists bruising under his grip. Cuffs would have been easier, but he didn’t seem to have those, either. He had fucked up with his equipment, and badly. Why the fuck didn’t I pack for this mission properly? His mind flitted to Jake. But no, he would have checked everything to make sure his trainee didn’t fuck them over this badly. This was his fault, whatever had happened.

Whatever had happened, he was going to be punished for it. He was going to be beaten. Depending on who the XO for this mission was, he might just find himself bent over a table for it. But if he hid – if he avoided the consequences – it would be so much worse. And if he just killed this man and hid the evidence of his failure… He shuddered to even imagine. The sooner he handled this absolutely massive fuckup and dealt with the consequences, the sooner he could—

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen after that. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. He shoved the man forward anyway, approached the door leading into the back of the clinic the base, and knocked. The door was locked. He knew he should wait.

“M-Marcus?” came the shaking voice from behind the door.

He… knew he shouldn’t answer to that name, that he should answer to Levy Unit C9I4M3, but that was the name that had been used. “Yes,” he croaked. “I have the assailant. Permission to execute.”

The door swung open, and Marcus stared into Jake’s eyes. He blinked.

Lars stood right behind Jake. Marcus shook himself. That’s who he reported to. He’d forgotten for a moment. He lifted his head and cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I need clarification on my orders.”

“Stop,” Lars breathed. “Marcus… Who the fuck is this?”

The man started blubbering. “M-my name is Tobias, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me, I didn’t know what this place was, I was just… I didn’t realize it was… oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was AMTEC, I didn’t know, I swear to g—”

“We’re not AMTEC,” Lars said, pushing past Jake. “Marcus, let him go—”

The man squirmed in Marcus’s grasp. Marcus’s brows pulled together. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d never – ever – been told to release a captive before. AMTEC’s prisoners got put down, or put in a hole. That’s how it worked.

Perhaps he’d misheard.

He shoved the man to his knees. His arms were pulled back in Marcus’s grip, and he cried out, rocking forward to relieve the pressure.

“Sir,” Marcus said. “I… I apologize for my sloppiness, in letting him get so close. But I… n-need clarification.” They were going to think he was stupid. And stupid Levs got consigned. But if he didn’t ask, they weren’t going to tell him, and releasing a prisoner into the base seemed like a profoundly stupid idea, even if it had been ordered by a superior officer. “Do I… have permission to execute—”

“Marcus,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, you need to look around, okay? We’re not in AMTEC anymore. You don’t have to—”

Rage surged through Marcus. Jake was going to get them both killed. He twisted the man’s wrists up, forcing him to bend further forward. He sobbed into the floor.

Lars lunged forward, hand raised toward the man. “Marcus!” they snapped, sounding to all the world like someone correcting a disobedient dog. “Marcus, enough.”

Marcus let the man go. Shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. Lars yanked their hand back like they’d been scalded. Jake just looked at Marcus with an unreadable expression.

No. Not unreadable. It was pity, written across his features clear as day.

“Fuck,” Marcus breathed. He took a halting step back. There was no one else in the hallway; the clinic doors were all closed, and he suspected all the patients and nurses had barricaded themselves inside. That’s where he was: the HRT clinic. He was at the clinic. Not the base.

The man sobbing at his feet wasn’t AMTEC. He didn’t look like a patient, either; his clothes looked dirty, but they were well-fitting and expensive looking. Marcus watched as Lars knelt down and grasped his shoulders, helping him sit up. There were dark bruises on his wrists where Marcus had held him.

The horror didn’t quite land, though. Not until his eyes returned to Jake’s, and he saw tears there.

Heat flooded his throat.

“Marcus,” Jake said softly.

Marcus didn’t wait for whatever Jake had been about to say. He turned and ran.

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

Everyone at the clinic liked Marcus’s piercings. There was a nurse who worked there – Raye, the one who had put on the gas mask the first day Marcus showed up – who gave Marcus a smile and a thumbs up when he saw them. The patients in the waiting room seemed to like them, too; Marcus recognized them all, and he supposed they were starting to recognize him, too. Even Celeste cracked a smile as she flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Nice,” she said. “You don’t look nearly so much like—”

“Celeste,” Lars sighed as they rolled their eyes.

She rolled hers right back. “Well. You don’t. It’s a good look.”

Jake just grinned.

Marcus followed Lars and Jake into the back of the clinic, rolling his shoulders and ignoring the phantom ache in his right arm. At this point he had tackled the storage room and the three patient rooms, as well as a different storage closet that he figured was probably left over from when this building had just been an office space. It held reams of copy paper, office supplies, holiday decorations, expired snacks, and piles of other junk that Marcus had combed through and organized until it looked as good as the rest of the clinic. The only room left to get through was Lars’s office. He figured it might take some convincing to let him organize that space. He wondered if he could simply lock them out until he was finished. They probably had other shit to do, anyway.

He glanced and Jake, wondering whose side he would take. He had to catch his breath. Jake was staring at him, looking better than he had since…

Since. He still had the slightest limp if someone was paying attention – and Marcus was always paying attention – but the bruises had faded. The brace was still on his forearm, but there was no other sign of the torture he’d survived for so long.

Except for when he smiled. His front tooth was still chipped, and probably would be forever. Marcus almost didn’t want to know what the men had done to him that had caused that. Maybe he would ask, one day. Or maybe Jake would tell him, when he was ready.

Jake took his metal hand. It ended the buzzing pain he hadn’t even realized had been gathering at the corners of his awareness. Jake squeezed; Marcus would have felt that, even before Todd adjusted the settings. But then Jake stroked his thumb back and forth against the back of Marcus’s hand, settling a brief wave of tingles. That, Marcus wouldn’t have felt until now. He – gently, carefully – squeezed back.

Marcus kissed his temple, and Jake melted against his side.

Lars dropped their keys on their desk with a sigh. Marcus eyed the piles of paper littering their desk, the floor, the shelves around them. He swallowed hard and shifted his weight from side to side.

“If you both are up to it,” Lars mumbled, “I didn’t have time to restock rooms when I left last night. Would you be willing to do that?”

Marcus glanced up. “Stock… rooms?” The piles of papers and boxes of syringes were so tantalizing. He already knew where he would start: there was a big pile of paper near the door with a sheet on top with giant letters scrawled across that said TO SHRED. It would be so easy. He would take those to the shredder, feed the papers through, then take the bags of paper bits out to the trash to make room in here for—

“Yeah, do you mind?” Lars said. “We’re out of almost everything. I think we’re entirely out of 21 gauges in the room closest to the waiting r—”

“Room one, yeah,” Marcus said. “Yeah, I can…” He glanced around at the papers again. “If that’s… what you need…”

“What I need is about ten million credits a year, a full-time staff, and for every person who works at AMTEC to suck-start a shotgun, preferably on national fucking news,” Lars snapped. Marcus’s eyes flicked to theirs as he froze.

Jake drew in a deep breath. “Lars,” he said gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” they griped. “Just… I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just been a shitty week. Will you please just—”

“On it, yeah,” Marcus said, turning to go. A flush prickled across his cheeks and neck. He felt it again, that horrible urge: shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. And another urge: to flinch away from a raised hand, a baton, a whip.

Yes, sir.

Even though he knew Lars would never do that, never want that from him. Lars was the farthest person from an AMTEC officer Marcus had ever met.

Lars was exactly the type of person Marcus would have been sent to kill a few months ago. Quickly, quietly, so there would be no news footage. The news would spin a story from the aftermath anyway, like they were paid to. He’d seen it so many times.

Terrorists… Drug smuggling… Heroic AMTEC raid… No civilian casualties… Increasing AMTEC budget once again…

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the thought.

How many of the people I’ve killed were like Lars? Like Celeste and Todd?

Like Jake?

Jake squeezed his hand once more, startling him out of his reverie. “They’re just having a bad day,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

Marcus pressed an absent-minded kiss to Jake’s cheek. “I know,” he said. “I know that.” He headed into a room. “I’ll start on this one, you start on the next?”

Jake held onto his hand and pulled him up short. “Sure,” he said, giving Marcus one last kiss. “Love you.”

“Love you.”

Marcus blew out a slow breath as he trudged to the first cabinet and opened it. Things inside weren’t as bad as Lars made them out to be; they still had enough linens to get through four patients, and enough syringes to probably get through the entire evening. But Lars liked things a certain way. Marcus supposed he could understand that. He opened the next cabinet. There was no extra butcher paper for the exam table. That, he conceded, was a more immediate problem.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. His head turned toward the paper-over window before he even realized what he was listening for.

Then the noise happened again: footsteps. Outside. Near the back of the building, where no patients had any reason to be.

He stepped out of the clinic room, flexing his metal hand. “Jake,” he said flatly from the hallway. “Get everyone into the back. Now.”

He didn’t turn to see if he would be obeyed. He knew he would be. He’d trained Jake too well for any other outcome.

He stalked down the hallway and through the lobby. Celeste glanced up at him and fell silent at the look on his face.

“Get everyone in the back now,” he said.

She wordlessly rose. The two patients in the waiting room didn’t move. Marcus ignored them. Everyone had their orders. Now he had his role. He pushed the doors open and snuck soundlessly out into the evening.

He’d heard the footsteps on the north side of the building, so that’s where he headed. If they were circling the building, or if there was more than one, well—

He told Jake to keep the others safe in the back. Marcus just had to make sure no one got that far. Not when Jake was still hurt. Not when he was still—

I never wanted him to have to fight again.

He crushed that thought. At the moment, it was irrelevant.

Overgrown bushes lined the northeast corner of the building, and so he immediately ducked into them. He shuddered as the branches trailed along his metal arm, sparking bizarre sensations.

He felt naked without his gun, or at least his knife. But he’d killed with his bare hands before.

A few yards away, gravel crunched under someone’s shoe – and it was definitely a shoe. Not a tac boot.

That was something, at least.

A metallic rattling sound.

A curse.

Marcus registered all these sounds, doing his best to pinpoint the assailant in space before he struck. He hoped there was only one.

If there wasn’t, at least he had warned the others.

He launched himself out of the bushes and closed the distance to the assailant in two quick strides. The man – maybe about Lars’s age – cried out as Marcus tackled him to the ground. The spray paint can flew from his hands as Marcus twisted both arms behind him.

“Agh! Fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know anyone was—” He cut himself off with a gasp as Marcus’s metal hand compressed his wrist.

A storm raged in Marcus’s head. Habit – more than habit, it was training, repetition, instinct – battered at him, bent his body toward a specific shape. Gun, if no gun then knife, if no knife then strike the face and neck. Execute and move. Execute and move. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to kill this man. He couldn’t remember who sent him outside. Had he done that on his own? He wasn’t allowed to self-deploy, not unless that was specifically stated in the mission objectives. Had someone ordered this man’s death? Had someone ordered him to kill any hostiles he came across?

He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure.

He needed clarification. Unauthorized executions by Levs were punishable by consignment. He had to seek further orders.

Back inside it was, then.

Marcus wordlessly wrestled the man to his feet. The man was pleading, sobbing, but Marcus didn’t hear it. He had learned not to hear it, when people begged for mercy – not that people often lived long enough to beg, with him. He was so, so good at this. He grabbed the man’s wrists in metal hand and seized the collar of his shirt in his other, shoving him toward the clinic entrance. He figured it didn’t much matter if the man saw the inside of the clinic. Once Marcus got clearance to dispatch him, he’d do it, quickly. Maybe he would be given his gun back. He wasn’t sure where it was. He’d be whipped for that. He might get worse than a whipping.

He released the man’s collar only for long enough to yank open the door and shove him ahead of him. He could feel the man’s wrists bruising under his grip. Cuffs would have been easier, but he didn’t seem to have those, either. He had fucked up with his equipment, and badly. Why the fuck didn’t I pack for this mission properly? His mind flitted to Jake. But no, he would have checked everything to make sure his trainee didn’t fuck them over this badly. This was his fault, whatever had happened.

Whatever had happened, he was going to be punished for it. He was going to be beaten. Depending on who the XO for this mission was, he might just find himself bent over a table for it. But if he hid – if he avoided the consequences – it would be so much worse. And if he just killed this man and hid the evidence of his failure… He shuddered to even imagine. The sooner he handled this absolutely massive fuckup and dealt with the consequences, the sooner he could—

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen after that. Something was tickling at the back of his mind. He shoved the man forward anyway, approached the door leading into the back of the clinic the base, and knocked. The door was locked. He knew he should wait.

“M-Marcus?” came the shaking voice from behind the door.

He… knew he shouldn’t answer to that name, that he should answer to Levy Unit C9I4M3, but that was the name that had been used. “Yes,” he croaked. “I have the assailant. Permission to execute.”

The door swung open, and Marcus stared into Jake’s eyes. He blinked.

Lars stood right behind Jake. Marcus shook himself. That’s who he reported to. He’d forgotten for a moment. He lifted his head and cleared his throat.

“Sir,” he said. “I need clarification on my orders.”

“Stop,” Lars breathed. “Marcus… Who the fuck is this?”

The man started blubbering. “M-my name is Tobias, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t kill me, I didn’t know what this place was, I was just… I didn’t realize it was… oh, fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was AMTEC, I didn’t know, I swear to g—”

“We’re not AMTEC,” Lars said, pushing past Jake. “Marcus, let him go—”

The man squirmed in Marcus’s grasp. Marcus’s brows pulled together. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He’d never – ever – been told to release a captive before. AMTEC’s prisoners got put down, or put in a hole. That’s how it worked.

Perhaps he’d misheard.

He shoved the man to his knees. His arms were pulled back in Marcus’s grip, and he cried out, rocking forward to relieve the pressure.

“Sir,” Marcus said. “I… I apologize for my sloppiness, in letting him get so close. But I… n-need clarification.” They were going to think he was stupid. And stupid Levs got consigned. But if he didn’t ask, they weren’t going to tell him, and releasing a prisoner into the base seemed like a profoundly stupid idea, even if it had been ordered by a superior officer. “Do I… have permission to execute—”

“Marcus,” Jake whispered. “Marcus, you need to look around, okay? We’re not in AMTEC anymore. You don’t have to—”

Rage surged through Marcus. Jake was going to get them both killed. He twisted the man’s wrists up, forcing him to bend further forward. He sobbed into the floor.

Lars lunged forward, hand raised toward the man. “Marcus!” they snapped, sounding to all the world like someone correcting a disobedient dog. “Marcus, enough.”

Marcus let the man go. Shoulders back. Hands behind his back. Head tucked. Lars yanked their hand back like they’d been scalded. Jake just looked at Marcus with an unreadable expression.

No. Not unreadable. It was pity, written across his features clear as day.

“Fuck,” Marcus breathed. He took a halting step back. There was no one else in the hallway; the clinic doors were all closed, and he suspected all the patients and nurses had barricaded themselves inside. That’s where he was: the HRT clinic. He was at the clinic. Not the base.

The man sobbing at his feet wasn’t AMTEC. He didn’t look like a patient, either; his clothes looked dirty, but they were well-fitting and expensive looking. Marcus watched as Lars knelt down and grasped his shoulders, helping him sit up. There were dark bruises on his wrists where Marcus had held him.

The horror didn’t quite land, though. Not until his eyes returned to Jake’s, and he saw tears there.

Heat flooded his throat.

“Marcus,” Jake said softly.

Marcus didn’t wait for whatever Jake had been about to say. He turned and ran.

If you want to be on the taglist (including for the spicy chapters,) let me know! I only tag people in 18+ chapters if I know they are adults through conversations or if their age/age range is in their bio.

"I know." Brewster keeps a hand on his shoulder, his bright smile dimming a little with sympathy. "I know, Lan. But we don't have much of a fucking choice, yeah? Boss says you learn to shoot, you learn to shoot. Van and I learned when we were like... ten or eleven. We started going on jobs around your age, so... You got a few years to wait that we didn't, right? That's some luck. Kept you safe as long as we could."

"Right." His chest hitches as he stares at the targets. Big black circle-eyes, bigger black circle-mouth. "Lucky."

His breath is thin. His lungs protest every movement he makes, but Brewster's right - there's no choice. If Isaac Marcoset wants another trigger on hand, Langdon is fifteen and that's as old as Van and Brewster were the first time they killed someone.

He aims. Brewster slides something like a heavy headphone set over his head, the noise of the birds suddenly silent. Langdon bites his lower lip.

Just like Brewster taught him. Safety off only when you're ready. No finger on the trigger til it's time.

If he thinks of Isaac Marcoset instead of the wooden target when he fires, that's his own business.

He hears, dimly, the sound of Brewster yelling but ignores it as he fires at the next target - Miss Delia and all her cruelties the image he holds this time. Then the bottles, one by one by one. The gun kicks a little but it feels good, too.

At the end, he missed more than half the bottles.

But the targets, Isaac and Delia Marcoset in his mind, have been shot right through the center.

Brewster takes the headphones off and hugs him, but Langdon can't take his eyes off the holes he just shot through the wood.

Leaving the estate for the first time in his life, taking off his collar and wearing other clothes, making choices for himself... It could all be as easy as two shots, aimed right.

"... Can I keep practicing?" His voice is hoarse. His lungs catch but he ignores the way his head goes light.

"I knew you'd like it once you tried," Brewster says cheerfully. "Let me reload for you, show you how to do it. You did fucking awesome, little man. You're going to be as good a shot as me one day, I can already tell."

Langdon thinks of red spreading over Miss Delia's stupid pristine tablecloth, she and her husband slumped over the table while Langdon walks away. Gets in a car, maybe. Goes somewhere, anywhere else.